You've won seven of your last ten bets. Does that tell you anything about whether you're betting well? Almost nothing.
With ten bets at odds close to 2.00, the probability of getting seven or more right by pure chance is around 17%. One in six people with no edge whatsoever would have the same record. And most of them would wrongly conclude they have talent.
The problem with small samples
Sports betting produces extremely noisy results. A ball hitting the post, a penalty in the 90th minute, a red card at halftime — none of this has anything to do with the quality of your decision when you placed the bet. You'd need hundreds of bets before win rate started telling you anything reliable, and by then you've already lost months.
You need a signal that appears faster.
The closing line
The final price of a market, immediately before the match starts, is the most informed estimate that exists. By that point everything has factored in: team news, last-minute injuries, pitch conditions, and — above all — money from people who know. Every bet placed moves the price, and big bets move it more.
The closing line is the consensus of the entire market, and it beats almost everyone consistently. And precisely because of that it serves as a measuring stick.
How to calculate CLV
Closing line value is the difference between the price you got and the closing price. You bet at 2.10 and the market closed at 1.95: you got value. You bet at 1.95 and it closed at 2.10: the market moved against you.
In percentage terms, it's simply how much better your odds were. From 1.95 to 2.10 is about 7.7% in your favour.
Why this is better than win rate
Because it converges much faster. Thirty or forty bets with consistent positive CLV already tell you something; thirty winning bets tell you nothing. CLV measures the decision, not the outcome.
And here's the part that's hard to accept: you can lose a bet and have made a good bet. If you got 2.10 in a market that closed at 1.90, you made the right decision even if the ball hit the post. Do that a hundred times and profit appears. Do the opposite — win bets with negative CLV — and profit disappears equally after a hundred.
What to do with this
Always record the odds you got and the closing odds for that same market and that same line. The comparison has to be exact: the closing price for a -1.5 handicap doesn't work to evaluate a bet you made at -2.0.
Then look at the average over time. If it's consistently positive, you're beating the market and the rest is patience. If it's negative, no number of wins will save that in the long run.